Thk Pilgrims and LIBER^^ 



Society oi Colonial V\ 
IN Rhode Island 



Address 

Made at the General Court of the 

Society of Colonial Wars in the State of 

Rhode Island 

and Providence Plantations 

December 30, 1920 



BY 
WORTHINGTON ChAUNCEY FoRD 



Issued by the courtesy of 

Henry Dexter Sharpe, Esquire 

Governor of the Society 






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NINE days ago the parting salute to the memory of the 
Pilgrims was given at Plymouth. Anything after 
that must seem faint and colorless indeed. Near the 
spot selected for the first house of worship, in surroundings 
bearing names and mementoes of the first years of settle- 
ment, with circumstances of a distinguished gathering and 
orator, the three hundred years of intervening time were 
rolled back to allow the beginnings to be seen. In the coming 
twelve months the town as we know it will give large place 
to a memorial of the original town. Under pious thought 
and skilful hands, there will arise in stone and bronze re- 
minders of the landing, of the first English immigration into 
New England, of the native Americans who gave them wel- 
come in broken English, of the lasting motive that has 
demanded and obtained recognition. Meanwhile the cur- 
tain again falls and it was time, for strange liberties are 
being taken of the seemly occasion. Not content with what 
poets and writers of fiction have imposed upon their memory, 
we are promised a book, masquerading as history, purport- 
ing to explain the "mystery" of Myles Standish. No one 
would be more surprised by the announcement than Standish 
himself. A sumptuous edition of the "Scarlet Letter" is to be 
issued "in honor" of the Pilgrim celebration. Picture the 
event, had so much as a copy of a like story been found on 
one of the Mayflower passengers. Foreign lands have of- 
fered an assisting hand. We have had fitting recognition at 
Old Plymouth, Southampton and Leyden, with much feast- 
ing, oratory and placing of memorials. England does not 
regret having permitted the Mayflower to sail, but some 
Englishmen are doing their best to recover what may be 
left of her. Prof. Rendel Harris, for example, claims to have 
found a beam of the ship in the flooring of an old barn. We 
have a picture of the interior of a barn, with an indubitable 
rafter, and under it the kindly features of Professor Harris 
with a look-that can be variously interpreted, from surprise 
at his great discovery to pleasure at being discovered. 

[5] 



Finally we have Sulgrave Manor, the home of the Washing- 
tons, linked up with the Pilgrims, heaven knows why; and 
very grave and socially prominent committees, scattering 
extraordinary history, have dined and journeyed to cul- 
tivate a consciousness of the connection and to turn it into 
cash. There are, apparently, no limits to a properly con- 
ducted propaganda. At least England at one time paid 
closer attention to a Washington than she ever did to the 
century of souls on the Mayflower. Even Sulgrave Manor is 
respectable to some of the schemes that have sought to at- 
tach themselves to the Tercentenary; but there is evidence 
that the American public has been "fed up" on the Pilgrims 
and now begins to poke fun at some features of an over- 
zealous or hysterical effort at canonization of the obvious. 

Archbishop Whately once amused himself by proving 
that the existence of Napoleon could not be admitted as a 
well-authenticated fact. The same doubt has arisen when 
reading current tributes to the Pilgrims, in which actions 
are asserted which are on the face more than improbable; 
claims are made which are inadmissible, and intentions 
attributed which could not have arisen at the time and 
under the circumstances. There has been danger of asking 
too much of us and of producing a company of those prodi- 
gies of excellence which plentifully sprinkle history, to the 
disadvantage of the subject and the distaste of the reader. 
Elizabeth's England was prolific of the hero type, of men 
who thought and did really great things in every branch of 
human activity. The brilliant accomplishment as illustiated 
in the written and printed page of the day leaves us gasping 
with astonishment, and greatness in evil and in good extorts 
our admiration. The very gorgeousness of the pageant, 
crowded with the imposing and the immortal, calls for a 
more restful contrast, and where could that be better sought 
than in the annals of an English village, somewhat remote 
from the center of things? Certainly such a contrast could 
be found in the Scrooby region and its yeoman population. 

[6] 



And from the humblest and most obscure of a territory of 
less than thirty-six square miles the leaders of the Pilgrim 
migration came. To clothe even those leaders with perfection 
and prophetic vision is to manufacture lay-figures for a 
museum instead of accepting them as human beings, par- 
taking of our faults and therefore capable of serving as 
models in their better traits. 

Strength, soundness of mind and body, a dash of obsti- 
nacy, character — do not such qualities acquire merit if well 
employed? 

If there is anything in the theory of selection, that part 
of the Leyden church which came to New England should 
stand high. The elimination of the weak and doubting 
began in England. It is only the stronger and more enter- 
prising who seek new fields or break wholly with the old. It 
required courage to go contrary to the authorities and the 
community, to depart from the church of their fathers, to 
sacrifice home and country and in defiance of law to leave 
the realm as fugitives. Only a part of the Scrooby con- 
gregation turned to Holland, and it was the part of strongest 
fibre. In Holland, poverty, hard toil, anxieties and disap- 
pointments culled out the better fitted to endure — we know 
nothing of what that process cost. And it was only a part of 
the Leyden church that came to New England, still tending 
to a selection of those the more eager to venture, to risk all 
on the throw of chance, who were mentally forward in desire 
and physically able to bear hardship. And after all this 
sifting of material, a sifting that had extended over more 
than a dozen years, the picked little band reached New 
Plymouth only to have half of its number consigned to 
earth before two years had passed. Who can measure by 
modern standards the cost in life between the flight to Hol- 
land and the deadly year in New England? 

In another sense it was a picked number, and we always 
have in mind those coming from the Leyden church, about 
one-third of the total Mayflower party. At Scrooby, in 

[7] 



Holland and in northern Virginia what names are most 
intimately associated with every move? Those of Robinson, 
Brewster, Bradford. This concentrated influence is remark- 
able and rested upon a unity of thought and purpose notable 
in itself, more notable in contrast with the other settlements 
made by Englishmen. We do not trace a break in this strong 
and dominating agreement. The Leyden congregation had 
no disputes with their hosts, the Dutch; they had no dis- 
putes among themselves. Robinson engaged in a public 
discussion with Episcopius, but in such a way as to leave no 
mention of it in contemporary writings, and it was an age of 
bitter controversy on religious beliefs and practices. Brewster 
set up as a printer, and his press issued some of the best 
dogmatic writing of the time; but it left no impress upon 
Robinson, or upon himself, long the efficient aid of Robin- 
son and destined to take his place in the new settlement 
with a soul moulded after that of his master. We know that 
Robinson wrote freely to that part of his flock in the wilder- 
ness, letters of advice, comfort and at times mild reproof. 
It was still a united congregation in spirit. 

I do not wish to decry the presence of others. Of Carver 
too little is known to form an opinion, yet we feel that he 
might have been a fourth leader. Of Cushman too much is 
known, and that knowledge does not greatly commend him 
to us as a disinterested friend or adviser. Winslow was an 
extremely able man, better equipped by a knowledge of the 
world than any of his colleagues; but for that very reason 
his influence was felt rather when worldly considerations 
were to be met. He was a good agent in business, a diplo- 
mat in negotiation and even an arguer on matters of morals 
where questions of state were also involved. Of Myles 
Standish and John Alden, those creations of a poet's fancy, 
little need be said. All these could disappear without de- 
creasing appreciably the general conception of the Plymouth 
settlement. Yet they are useful as examples. They and the 
even more obscure freemen bowed to the rule of the leaders, 

[8] 



unquestioning and helpful, giving their silent testimony to 
the harmony and union of this isolated gathering of English. 
Isolation is the only word to apply. Robinson and his 
followers had stood alone in Scrooby, for their neighbors, 
good churchmen, saw to that; they stood apart in Holland, 
separated from the Dutch by language, by inheritance, by 
that English aloofness which is still a characteristic of the 
people. In New Plymouth they were more by themselves 
than ever. With the French at the north they could have no 
intercourse; with the Dutch at New Netherland they could 
have trade relations, but that involved no closer intimacy 
than they maintained with the annual fishing vessels coming 
to the coast of Maine. Virginia and the West Indies, where 
their own people could be found, were too distant to permit 
frequent intercourse, and further, both islands and main 
were royalist and Church of England — bars to closer ties. 
The Indians, an occasional lawless free-trader and an even 
more occasional visit of a passing vessel gave them all the 
intercourse they had. Even ships coming from England did 
not bring welcome news, or John Robinson, or more than 
a small part of the Leyden church. Shut in by the weakness 
of their numbers and position, closely held together by their 
economic needs, they recognized to the full the leadership 
of a few, to whom they entrusted the relations with their 
English creditors, the management of the fur trade, the ac- 
quisition of new lands, and whatever was demanded for de- 
fence. This isolation and union must have reacted on the set- 
tlers. In the far east solitude, a residence in the desert with 
fasting and vigil, turns out a prophet or a madman. For nine 
full years Plymouth was without a neighboring settlement — 
more than sufficient time to mellow and ripen the originally 
good stock. 

In carrying the story thus far we have seen that three 
men were responsible for what was done in the migration — 
John Robinson, William Brewster and William Bradford. 

[9] 



But is not that list excessive? William Bradford was a boy 
when Scrooby congregation was formed, and all his training 
for his future work was under Robinson and Brewster. He 
was wholly a product of their teaching and example. Brewster 
himself had been in Holland with Mr. Secretary Davison, 
who was held answerable by his uncertain mistress, Queen 
Elizabeth, for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. 
Brewster either suffered by this connection or he recognized 
that he was ill fitted for public affairs. His university tastes 
came back to him, he retired to Scrooby where there was no 
opening for advancement, and gathered his fellow separatists 
into a communion which encouraged his studies while it 
effectually closed the door to public recognition. Receptive, 
yet undervaluing his own abilities, he sat under Clyfton and 
Robinson, with a humble and passive mind. There is no 
record of his teaching before the migration, so he too may be 
regarded as a product of Robinson. As for Robinson him- 
self he was assistant to Clyfton and, a younger man, took the 
impress of the older. Clyfton was one of a number of suf- 
ferers for faith in that day, converting many to God, says 
Bradford, by his faithful and painful ministry. So that 
coming to the source of influence we find that the separatist 
church of Scrooby, Leyden and New Plymouth was but a 
cupful drawn from a common reservoir. The leaders were 
unlike their fellows only in their greater enterprise, which 
brought a part of this congregation across the ocean. 

Was there not more than a trace of monachism in this? 
Wherever found, in Asia as well as in Europe, monachism is 
the same — the pursuit of some ideal of life which society 
cannot supply, but which is thought attainable by abnega- 
tion of self and withdrawal from the world. Weary with the 
toils of life, unequal to its problems and intent upon an 
undisturbed enjoyment of their own belief and practices, 
the Pilgrims turned away from Europe and took a chance 
with fortune. If not the vows there was the actual presence 
of poverty, chastity and obedience. In retiring from the 

[10] 



old world they entered upon a new, and for nearly ten years 
they lived their almost monkish existence. Worldly wise 
they were not, for they received a check at every turn. Under 
pressure of their debts they established a fishing stage 
on Cape Anne and a trading house on the Penobscot. They 
were fleeced by their English creditors, cheated at the trading 
house and driven from the fishing stage. They were weak 
in the face of interested opposition. They could not suppress 
Morton at Merrymount; Endecott did it for them; they 
were unable to defend their Penobscot station against the 
French, and lost it to Massachusetts Bay. Offering a share 
in the Connecticut River territory to their stronger neighbor, 
they saw with grief that Massachusetts had set out to get 
the whole. Whenever they came into contact with the world 
they were unable to uphold their just claims, and suffered 
from the want of fairness in others. The direct and almost 
perfect design of their first years became blurred in the strong 
and interfering lights of rivals, and by the passing of their 
leaders. Robinson died in 1625, and Brewster in 1643. Of 
the great trio Bradford alone remained. New Plymouth 
ceases to be a factor in the colonizing of Massachusetts, 
and though maintaining a separate political existence, is 
absorbed in the Confederation of New England Plantations 
in 1643. Thenceforward she is the handmaiden of arrogant 
and rapidly growing Massachusetts Bay. The policy of 
isolation had broken down in practice. 

Can it be claimed for them that they were ever conscious 
of having a mission? That they were enlightened leaders in 
empire and in democracy? Why gild the gold of their homely 
severity or streak their sacrifice with flaunting colors? Is 
it not enough to select and mark the quality by which they 
have contributed more than all other colonizing nations can 
show in America? They had adopted a church in which one 
Christian was as good as another; they were therefore demo- 
crats — self-governing. They brought with them English 
institutions — the best, for they gave the opportunity to 

[II] 



own land without the drag of feudal restrictions and the 
right to enjoy the fruits of their own labor. They pinned 
the frontier of England to Massachusetts as it had already 
been stretched across the sea to Jamestown. From those 
two points that frontier — now American — has been car- 
ried to the Pacific, bearing with it the restless energy and un- 
satisfied longings of the pioneer, a pressure that has vivified 
our history. Compare this record with that of France and 
Spain in America, each of which opened and lost an empire. 
Was not the democracy of New Plymouth and Jamestown 
potent in working this miracle? But that democracy went 
back into the heart of English history. In a virgin soil it 
took new root and improved on its original. The plant 
carried the seed of immortality. 

Is it not evident that what we regard in the Pilgrims is 
an example, an influence, not men? Clyfton, Robinson, 
Brewster and Bradford are but convenient names on which 
to hang our judgments. Fine characters and leaders as they 
were, they were the agents through whom the active prin- 
ciple wrought. There was no fervid ardor here, none of the 
fire-tipped tongue to arouse and sway a people. Peter the 
Hermit — it would be absurd to look for his like under the 
Tudors or Stuarts. Under the movement that tore the 
Scrooby congregation from its original setting and flung it 
on the shores of Massachusetts there was something primal, 
the commanding force that compels extraordinary actions 
often through unpromising agents. A matter of conscience, 
it was more a question of freedom. 

And the same question is constantly confronting us in 
many forms. A century and a half after the landing one 
George Washington came to represent the problem of that 
day — a commonplace man in thought, a meritorious 
colonial product of whom in ordinary times one would have 
looked for safe not great things. He met every call upon his 
ability; in homely phrase he expressed the heart of the con- 
troversy with the mother country, embodied it, trained an 

[12] 



army, fought no great battle, won and left the country se- 
cure under a constitution which he only could have imposed 
on a half-reluctant people. Freedom in union was gained 
through him, and we marvel at the instrument without 
abating one iota our admiration of his real greatness of 
character. Again is it not a principle we recognize and find 
the name a convenience? Was it not a question of freedom? 

Nearly a century later there came from the middle West 
one of the most uncouth men ever recognized in public 
honors. We placed him in the Presidential chair, we loaded 
him with responsibilities and we drenched him with ridicule. 
After four years' trial we renewed his cares and anxieties in 
a campaign that turned on a phrase — about swapping horses 
in midstream — and continued to fling abuse and criticism 
at him, until by the flash of an assassin's pistol we saw true. 
And out of the darkness of that hour there came a nation's 
hero. One who had been a critic wrote with true insight 
three days after the second inaugural address: "That rail- 
splitting lawyer is one of the wonders of the day. Once at 
Gettysburg and now again on a greater occasion he has 
shown a capacity for rising to the demands of the hour 
which we should not expect from orators or men of the 
schools. This inaugural strikes me in its grand simplicity 
and directness as being for all time the historical keynote 
of this war; in it a people seemed to speak in the sublimely 
simple utterance of ruder times." Could praise go further? 
An Englishman has told the story after careful study of this 
doubly uncouth character, first because of the unrestricted 
ridicule and secondly by the equally unrestrained praise, and 
with a touch of that insular prejudice that makes the pres- 
ence of an Englishman known and felt rather than beloved. 
He has placed Lincoln very much where we would wish to 
have him placed. Again is it not a principle we recognize 
and find the name a convenience? Was it not a question 
of freedom? 

Fortunate the nation which has such heroes, expressive of 

[13] 



its highest aspirations. Happy the people who will accept 
such, conscious that each has marked an advance not only 
in their own freedom but in the freedom of the world. In 
the one case an end was put to colonial dependence; in the 
other, the immorality of slave labor was demonstrated be- 
yond recall. The world of 1775 was a little world, but the 
lesson applied to new as well as to old continents. In 1865 a 
wider world saw what a people could do when stirred by a 
righteous revolt against a social system which had become a 
bar upon progress. In both there was something basic, 
primal, that goes back of all human record into the night of 
history. 

The lesson is obvious. No individual can withdraw from 
his fellows and stand alone. He dies or becomes an incum- 
brance on the wheels of social progress. No people can stand 
apart and claim that they are remote from or have no con- 
cern for others. The world, old and new, has been banded 
together by science, and as never before by interest, engulfed 
in a common misfortune. If what is called civilization is to be 
saved it can only be done under union and freedom. There is 
no place on earth in which a refuge from the storm can be 
sought, as did the Pilgrims; to renounce association in their 
spirit would be desperate, a cowardly and monstrous error. 
We must take our shares of evil and of good, of responsibili- 
ties as well as of benefits, costly as both must be. America 
first! Yes. First in right, first in freedom, and first freely and 
in a self-sacrificing spirit to share those blessings with her 
colleagues of the world. 



[14] 



